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Crucial Conversations
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Crucial Conversations
The Alchemy of Focus: Turning Procrastination into Productive Power with Peter Ludwig
Ever been caught in the grip of procrastination, watching the hours slip away as your keyboard lies untouched? Meet Peter, a tech entrepreneur turned anti-procrastination crusader, whose journey from distraction-prone programmer to best-selling author is nothing short of inspiring. As we sit down with him, Peter spills the secrets of a stable business, the importance of a resilient team, and how shifting focus from technology to mindset catalyzed his success. He even tackles the double-edged sword of writing a book on procrastination while wrestling with ADHD, a challenge that led him to practical strategies for productivity and a happier life.
This episode isn't just a success story; it's a toolbox for anyone looking to harness their potential and prioritize what truly matters. Peter's reflections on his early days—ditching computer games for code—illustrate how recognizing and redirecting talent can spark a fulfilling career. Those strategies that helped him write a book that's topping charts in 24 languages and is number one in the Czech Republic? He lays them out for us, promising not just a boost in productivity but also a path to a more balanced, enjoyable life. Join us for an engaging conversation with Peter, where every minute spent is a step toward conquering your own to-do list—and maybe even that pesky habit of putting things off.
Thank you so much for for coming through and spending time with us. In your busy schedule. You're doing some pretty epic stuff and I've been looking forward to this conversation you touching on two things that I need to.
Speaker 1:I need to, I mean, in the ai space I'm I'm as deep as a non-technical person can go. I'm learning every day, so I'm keen to understand where you're at and what you're doing in the ai space. And then you also have written a book and have some subject matter expertise in procrastination, which, yeah, is one of my weaknesses and I don't think it's unique to me, but I do struggle with it and find that I'm either really efficient or really, if I have too much time, I really procrastinate yeah, it's so common right.
Speaker 2:So thank you for having me and I'm looking forward to the whole conversation yeah, no, it's uh gonna be a giddy.
Speaker 1:So, um, maybe just a bit of your genesis story, because you've had quite a amazing build-up to this point in your life. Maybe you can take us back and help us understand where did this all start and give us a bit of insight I still hope that I have the uh longer part of my life still in front of me.
Speaker 2:So I consider myself still very young. I'm 38. I'm turning 38 in one week, nice. So I still believe that the biggest things are coming in the future. But I started my entrepreneurship journey when I was 19. So I still have the same company, so now it's almost more than 18 years. I have a very stable team. So my number one employee, martin he still works for me, so he's our CTO. That's unusual. And I have a small team of 25 people employees and the team is very stable. So I had 25 people five years ago. So I had 25 people five years ago. I had 25 people 10 years ago, so it's very stable team.
Speaker 2:And I started as entrepreneur in tech. So we did some software development and then shortly I realized that the problem is not technologies. But the problem is not technologies but the problem is the mindset. So I started to deliver some talks on the topic of mindset and motivation and then my publisher approached me and he was like okay, peter, now it's time to write a book. I was like okay, so writing a book about procrastination, and to procrastinate, it's truly twice painful.
Speaker 2:So I had to deploy all my strategies on myself because I think that I have definitely a little ADHD, so to focus and to sit and to write was truly the most difficult activity in my life. But since the book is published and since the book is done, it seems that I understand something about procrastination, because I accomplished that, so I was able to conquer my procrastination and now the book is bestseller in 24 languages. In my country of Czech Republic, the book is truly like number one bestseller and it seems that procrastination is truly a big issue for most of us and there are some strategies that you can use to be more productive and, at the end, even happier. It's not just about working more. It's more about like, focus on what is important and then maybe have even more free time or time for yourself, nice.
Speaker 1:Congrats. That's quite a nice success arc. You got there. I want to take a step back. What company did you start A software business at the age of 19?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So I was studying computer science back then and I realized that I have very talented schoolmates back then but they were procrastinating a lot. So we were playing, uh, computer games games all the time and I realized, okay, maybe where are we now in czech? Yeah, it was in czech, and it was truly funny, because, uh, I thought, okay, maybe we should invest our talent somewhere else, uh, rather than to play computer games every day. What?
Speaker 1:games were you guys playing, so so what was like the addiction? Was it like all of g2, or I think?
Speaker 2:like a lot of students, they they truly have struggled that, uh, they started to study a subject or a school that they are not connected with. So it was also my case. I was studying computer science. I was interested in computers back then, but a lot of those subjects were completely, let's say, for me it was not that fun to study. Playing computer games was better, but still I felt empty inside because you lack purpose when you are just playing. So then I realized to start my own startup. Back then the word startup, I think, didn't exist, but now, from today's perspective, it was own startup. Back then the word startup, I think didn't exist. So, but now from today's perspective, it was a startup and slowly I've got a team of five developers, then 10 developers, 15 developers.
Speaker 1:And what were you doing Ad sourcing SaaS development?
Speaker 2:Yeah, something like that. We started with developing some internets for hospitals, then websites and those things. So I had a team of very young developers and we were procrastinating a lot. So I remember that we were arguing who will get up on Wednesdays and open to our cleaning lady in our first offices and she came around 10 am and we were arguing who will get up to open her. So it was a beautiful time. I enjoyed that a lot because, uh, I had big dreams. I was, I was very young, I had a young team, so so it was uh magic uh. But now, from from the, the, uh, if I look back, I I think that it was the best decision of my life to start my own entrepreneurship career, and definitely it was difficult. Definitely you truly need to have a huge vision and ability to overcome a lot of failures, but still I believe that entrepreneurship is the best activity that you can do in your life.
Speaker 1:Amen. Tell me about your failures and some of the toughest moments you went through. I'd like to zoom in on that.
Speaker 2:Toughest failures Well, maybe the biggest one was when I lived in the US. I moved to New York City when the book was published there and I lived two years in New York and the beginning was published there. And I lived two years in new york and it was the beginning was amazing. I arrived at jfk and they had my book next to bestsellers like michelle obama, simon sinek, so so the book was truly out. It was a bestseller. I arrived there and I thought, well, I'm already famous.
Speaker 2:But, uh, like, the average lifespan of bestseller in the US is very short. So in two months, you have another bestseller. In three months, you have another 10 bestsellers. So you truly have to do all those things. You have to do podcasting, you have to publish a lot of content on social media, and it was truly tough for me to start from scratch in the US because I have my all team in Europe. But when it started to grow and when I got the traction, I had a lot of keynotes around the US.
Speaker 2:Then COVID hit and what happened was that all my speaking opportunities were canceled from one week to another. So we lost like 80 to 90 percent of all the income. So it was truly tough for me and I left New York. I remember that it was Friday, march 13th 2020. And I wasn't there since then, so I still have my stuff there. I still have my basketball ball in New York somewhere hidden. But this was truly the main failure in my life. So it was connected with COVID and I went back to Europe. Everything was canceled and we lost 90% of our income and I was truly back then like very, very sad about the whole thing.
Speaker 1:I mean, that wasn't really in your control, I suppose.
Speaker 2:It wasn't. It wasn't, Why's more of a?
Speaker 1:why do you see that as a failure versus a? Is it because you didn't? I mean, that was a black swan event that hit the world.
Speaker 2:It was definitely a black swan event and well, and it affected all other people, so all keynote speakers were having the same kind of struggles. All keynote speakers were having the same kind of struggles. So, but then we switched the whole business model. We started to do like online keynotes, online conferences, and I would never expect it that people will pay for online education, especially in Central Europe, and what happened was that for my first online session, like 650 attendees enrolled, paid attendees, and it was a huge turning point. And now, like 70% of our income is from those online webinars. So it was a good thing at the end, but the first month was truly terrible. We were basically choosing like which 50% of our employees, maybe even more, to fire. So at the end, we survived. We fired no one, but still it was highly, highly challenging. So it was not like my failure, but it was the toughest period of my career, definitely.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So I'm trying to understand the startup and the developers and the business that you do there. Is directly tethered to the book and the work that you do on that side of the fence, or is that to raise awareness and use that as a funnel to pipe work to the business?
Speaker 2:Well, it was kind of coincidence because I started to do my talks about procrastination as a hobby because my university I was studying computer science and after that I started to study the second university and it was law. And in my law university they invited me for my first keynote live keynote back then and they asked me to do a keynote about entrepreneurship for students and I was thinking like, okay, what to tell them? And my first keynote it was like 12, maybe 14 years ago yeah, 14 years ago and my first keynote was about procrastination and I told those students that key enemy of success is procrastination. So and I still have some pictures from the the keynote I was drinking wine during the presentation and, uh, it was a little bit weird, but I've got an amazing feedback from many of those attendees.
Speaker 2:So I decided to do a more keynotes for more universities. Back then it was like free, like only a meaningful activity. But then I started to get more offers and more offers and some companies asked me to do some keynotes on procrastination. So I started with keynotes before the book.
Speaker 2:So the book was the uh is basically the summary of all my research that I did for all those keynotes. And then I started to have a one-on-one coaching clients too, and in one day I realized that I truly want to follow this path. So I switched the whole mission of the company and those developers that they were developing our clients' products. They started to develop our own platform for selling our products and things like that. So so that was a coincidence at the beginning, and I slowly started to follow the path that I truly enjoyed. So now it's my main passion in life to be on stage and helping people to understand their procrastination, so, so it's very highly meaningful to me interesting.
Speaker 1:I mean, you could never have predicted that you never, know procrastination go-to person, such an interesting and obviously it's stood the test of time as well. Right because? It seems like you're still well into delivering keynotes and webinars and work around procrastination, so the principle of managing procrastination hasn't faded away. It's something that I think a lot of people struggle with, and clearly there's a high demand for some help with it. Do you think it's become more of?
Speaker 2:a problem, definitely. We have data on that, and especially with new algorithms that are similar to TikTok, because all those other social platforms are TikTokized. They are very similar to TikTok. If you take Facebook Reels or Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, it's just the copy of TikTok and those algorithms are highly addictive. There are some studies that TikTok algorithm is as addictive as crack cocaine. So basically, this environment truly boosts procrastination of many, and it has a huge impact on mental health too. So we have a lot of very sad data that the rate of anxiety is depression and even suicide is growing tremendously, and it's highly influenced with social social media. So so social media is a core of growth of procrastination worldwide for those that don't fully understand procrastination how would you define procrastination?
Speaker 1:well, how do you know if you have a problem with?
Speaker 2:procrastination. The most important part is that a lot of people they think that procrastination is a time management problem, that you can't organize your priorities. But when you dive into all the research it seems it's more emotional management issue. So if you need to do a task and you feel uncomfortable about the task like you have some negative emotions towards the task then you are postponing it. So procrastination is the situation that you truly know what you want to do but you are postponing that. So I have a few examples.
Speaker 2:So you know that it's very healthy to exercise and you truly made the decision. You truly know down those New Year's resolutions. So you truly want to go to the gym, but at the end you sit and do something completely different. So you do those meaningless activities like scrolling on your social media. So even though you truly know what you want, sometimes we are unable to push ourselves to truly start. So this is procrastination. And sometimes procrastination is also about avoiding tasks. So, for example, the corporate procrastination like you can see your colleague at work and he's working hardly, he's working 14 hours a day, but maybe he's replying some useless emails and not to focus in on what is truly important for him. So sometimes procrastination is about avoiding those tasks that are important and doing those tasks that are not that important. But from outside you can't see who's procrastinating and who's not.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I want to split it into two paths. There's the work procrastination and then there's your personal life discipline, what you should be doing to be healthy, balanced procrastination. I want to zoom in on the work procrastination, and the example you gave is a very relevant and interesting one. I have this I have quite a few months worth of claims that I have not done and it keeps building up Confession, and the more that it builds up, the less I want to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I find it completely meaningless and the process of doing it is just an absolute nightmare for me.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I just keep pushing this to the side and ignoring it and it's actually costing me money. I mean, it's the craziest thing, right? And I keep getting a lecture from someone that I know in my life that is like listen, are you like retarded this?
Speaker 2:is a no brainbrainer.
Speaker 1:This is money that can come back to you, but I completely cannot sit down and and do this one task because I'm busy with so many other interesting things. So the psychology behind it is interesting. And there's another comment. I'd be keen to hear what your thoughts are on that. But there's another comment you made now, which is people don't want to do the tasks that they what are your exact words? They don't want to do work that they see as negative or meaningless.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, purpose is crucial for long-term motivation, and if you lack purpose or meaning in those tasks, that's one of the main sources of procrastination.
Speaker 1:So most people don't have the luxury of doing what they love. That's it that's, that's the problem. So how? How do you coach and advise people to deal with this reality of having to do mundane tasks, like the example I just gave you, that cost you money and make you feel like you've been a complete idiot to actual work, tasks that may be soul destroying, okay. Well, what is your, what is your recommendation to help people frame or reframe their thinking?
Speaker 2:I I usually blame uh leaders for that, because if kids uh don't like to study, it's not their fault, it's fault of their teachers. If employees procrastinate, it's again not their fault, it's more problem of their managers. So it starts with the managing team usually, because the old saying says that fish stinks from the head. So if you have a working environment that is full of procrastination and people lack purpose, usually if you have some deeper discussion with their leaders and managers what you can find is that they also lack purpose. So it starts from top down, and I would not blame employees if they lack purpose, I would blame the leadership.
Speaker 1:So it starts with the leadership. That's interesting. I've never ever connected that dot or thought about it in that way, and I agree that in today's world or maybe it's always been the case people crave purpose are doing phenomenally well in today's world are the ones that have a very clear purpose and have rallied their culture, their troops, around that purpose and empowered people to deliver within their own respective domain against that purpose. A lot of the work that I do helps organizations to find that mission statement and purpose and design their technology. Roadmap against it, and that seems to pull everyone in line and focus innovation quite nicely. Roadmap against it, and that seems to pull everyone in line and focus innovation quite nicely. So there is that. That makes sense to me what you just said. But I suppose there's still a level of self-responsibility, surely?
Speaker 2:Definitely there is, but I truly love the term that is called purpose gap, because they made the research I think it was a harrod business review and the outcome of the research was that, like 85 percent of companies, they have what they call stated mission and they have their values somewhere uh on on walls and they have their uh mission, vision statement or whatever, but only 25 percent of employees truly feel purpose at work. So this is called purpose gap. So everyone is talking about purpose. But if you ask their or whatever, but only 25% of employees truly feel purpose at work. So this is called purpose gap. So everyone is talking about purpose. But if you ask their employees almost like 25%, only they feel something when they are at work.
Speaker 2:And this is a huge problem because when you look at the data, it seems that the main source of growth of depression in Western world is not just social media but lack of purpose at work. So, and that was my experience when I lived in the US I lived three blocks from Wall Street, so I lived in financial district, lower Manhattan and a lot of my friends. They were the most successful people of our era. They had PhDs from Harvard. They have successful startups. They had a lot of money, status, whatever you think, but in Wall Street you have the highest level of antidepressant intake. Why so? Because a lot of people there are lacking purpose. You can be super successful, you can have the most fancy cars and whatever. You can live in the best city in the world% of employees that lack purpose they probably experience much deeper procrastination compared to those 25% that they feel something.
Speaker 1:Hmm, that's fascinating. Hmm, it's quite definitely making me think, because I've never correlated purpose to procrastination, procrastination to mental health issues.
Speaker 1:And if you think about the consequence of that, that impacts your business dramatically, because your biggest asset is your employees right, yeah and if you want to succeed in today's world, you have to make sure that your asset or your employees well-being and health is intact to deal with the stresses that we face today. So what practical advice would you be able to give anyone that's whether it's a startup, sme or enterprise to understand if they have a purpose, gap and B, establish purpose and how to filter it into the organization.
Speaker 2:Right. So the whole first chapter of my book is about finding purpose. So I have some practical tools on how you can do that at Workspace, and the main idea is not to build company mission and values top-down. You should ask your employees about their values. So it's more discussion, rather than when you print your mission statement and put it on the wall.
Speaker 2:So I did a project with one very successful company and they have the the japanese mother, and I was working with local european office of that company and what happened was that, uh, they got new values from the mother and they put those values everywhere. So and I asked the managing team there, what do you feel? Uh, when you read those words? And they they were like it's like empty phrases. And I asked them like okay, and if you don't feel anything, so what do you think about your employees? Like what, what they should feel if? If you don't feel anything.
Speaker 2:So then we did a workshop with their employees and I asked them like okay, so when are you most fulfilled during the workday? Tell me in last uh half a year, what was those strongest moments? Uh, where you felt passionate work and we share those stories together and basically we build values uh from bottom up, and this uh works much better because because of the term that is called IKEA effect. If you let people to build their own furniture from IKEA, they feel better at the end because they did something for that and they invested their energy into that. So when you are building those mission statements, when you are working on those company values employees, they should have IKEA effect about that, about the outcome, and it has to be discussion and then it works. Then they are more engaged and you don't have that huge purpose gap. It's the first time.
Speaker 1:I've ever heard that it's always the top down right.
Speaker 2:And that's the reason why it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Fair. Is there not risk, in coming from the bottom up, that you lose your North Star or dilute your company culture or confuse it?
Speaker 2:Well, I did this type of workshop in many, many companies, for example, the super successful company Chibo they are like German-based company and I did the workshop with the local Prague team and what happened was that of course they have the North Star from the corporation. So it's there. Of course they have the north star from the corporation. Yeah, so it's there. But if you have the discussion, you often come up to much better terms, much better words, and usually it fits together. But the only difference is that the outcome is theirs. It's their wording, it's their style of thinking. So it usually connects, because you always have the North Star from the mother or from the founder. But you help those employees to connect with the North Star.
Speaker 1:So basically the best way, how to do that is like 20% top down and 80% bottom up and to connect those two things together. Got it? That makes sense. Yeah, okay, what does that process look like from the bottom up and how that?
Speaker 2:maybe you can share some practical use cases yeah, uh, when I do those workshops they usually have four hours, first two hours I'm explaining them, like some case studies from other companies or other domains. I'm explaining them the science behind motivation, that truly the source of long-term motivation is purpose and combining purpose with strengths. So if you know your strengths and ask yourself, well, where I can use those strengths to deliver even more value to others, then, uh, you feel, uh, you feel like, uh, you feel fulfilled and you are more often in the state of flow. So, so when you are working on something, time stops for you. You are in present moment. So when you experience flow, it means that you are doing something, that you are using your strengths and you feel purpose.
Speaker 2:So you can ask those employees okay, when it was the last moment you felt this state of flow, in what activities? And we are having truly a discussion. Like, I love to mix all types of employees so you can have, like, sales people, you can have people for marketing, you can have, uh, for example, some accountants, and when they discuss, like, how they felt, uh, during the the last half a year and what was those best moments for them, it helps them to connect together and it helps to uncover the purpose of the whole organization. So usually we start to with uncovering their personal values and we are we are trying to build something based on on those personal missions and then to combine those missions together. I'm smiling.
Speaker 1:You do the same, right, but, but the part so I do and, uh, unconsciously didn't realize how important a role it's playing in the, the subject matter that you, you, you're sharing, yeah, uh, because you cannot fight procrastination without trying to find purpose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so connected. So basically, when you procrastinate it's like a red blinking light that you probably miss a purpose in life.
Speaker 1:You said something that's a key word that's making me smile. The last three podcasts that I've done, one thing that keeps popping up states of flow, and it's such an amazing thing and it came and it's come from completely different subject matter experts. One is a professional pianist and we're talking about how, when she gets on stage, her state of flow enables her to deliver such a complicated performance in such a solo environment. That it's natural and I know, if I look at my workday, I have to divvy it up between many different things, and what's interesting is, when I find a state of flow at work, I'm doing the things that I believe I have purpose in and my creativity sparks.
Speaker 1:My work performance sparks the delivery, output sparks the enjoyment from the whole process is just, I'm not. I'm not, um, uh, what do you call it? Time checking?
Speaker 1:I'm just flowing right and I'm producing creative stuff. So this is a very interesting correlation between helping to, because in the previous podcast, where the state of flow came up, we were talking about innovation and how innovation helps drive um. Uh, innovation helps drive purpose, obviously, and we ended up on the state of flow discussion, but it's interesting to see it tethered to eliminating procrastination, which can fundamentally change the landscape for an organization. If you solve that problem and you get all of your staff moving in the same direction, with purpose and no procrastination, it's a whole different company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I usually say that state of flow is just the exact opposite of procrastination. So more flow, less procrastination. So it's an antidote for procrastination.
Speaker 1:How would you define state of flow?
Speaker 2:Yeah, state of flow. From the neurobiological point of view, if I scan your brain, and when you are in a state of flow, you have higher level of dopamine. So basically, for example, for ADHD people they call this hyperfocus you have a lot of dopamine in your brain and, uh, you are hyper focused. You, you are able to be much more creative because of the higher level of dopamine. So, and if you are not in a state of flow and if you miss the dopamine, you procrastinate because it's truly difficult to push yourself to those, uh, meaningless activities.
Speaker 2:So sometimes I describe that you have two zones. You have the zone of procrastination and you are avoiding things. You are reading on social media some useless info, or you are reading on Wikipedia how to construct, I don't know, atomic bomb or something. So you are avoiding. But then if you are able to push through it's like when you have eyes, so you have to push through you will get to the state of flow and it's completely different mode. So when you are in the state of flow, you have a higher level of dopamine in your brain. You are hyper-focused, your creativity goes up. Time stops for you are hyper focused. Your creativity goes up. You, you are time stops for you, and then when you have destruction, for example, notification or something, or your colleague uh, when, when he or she comes to your office, this destruction can ruin your state of flow and you are back then in a zone of procrastination. So it's all about designing your working environment to, let's say, to foster state of flow.
Speaker 1:Can we just agree between you and me that the person that created open plan offices should be forever in the history books anointed as the killer of state of flow?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. Or for some people working from home if they have kids, like how you can be in a state of flow when you have a kid next to you. So, for example, for me, the place that I have the best state of flow are tea houses, because I wrote the whole book in one beautiful tea house without internet connection, and I sit there. You have a little noise, but it's not like being in a office when you have your colleagues there. So everyone has a different environment, but you should truly find your the best environment for your flow.
Speaker 2:Someone loves to work from trains, someone loves to work from meeting rooms, someone loves to work from I don't know parks, but this is truly important, like find right place for your flow and then get rid of all those distractions, like all those notifications. Notifications are are truly dangerous because, like you have endless notifications from your social media, or like when the new email pops up, it can you ruin your flow. So so it's about designing your day to have like long chunks of time without distraction, and then you can accomplish like five times more yeah, so let's recap that purpose first.
Speaker 1:One purpose can come in the form of understanding and establishing a bottom up strategy with your company to help them understand how they correlate or tether into the the north star okay and strengths strengths are important okay knowing your strengths okay, as an individual
Speaker 2:uh, both like, for example, uh, if I have my own team, uh, and my team is very diverse. I have, uh sales people, I have developers, I have marketing people, I have accountants and the back office. But I understand that everyone is different and I know their strengths. And, for example, if someone is systematic, he can experience state of law when he's working with Excel tables. If someone is, let's say, extroverted, they have state of flow when they are doing business meetings, for example.
Speaker 2:So you need to understand what are your unique strengths and base your career on your strengths. A lot of people, they are constantly somehow fighting with their weaknesses. They are struggling with their weaknesses, but for me it's like base what you are doing on your strengths, like from 80%, let's say, and only 20%. Well, sometimes we all need to get outside of our comfort zone and work on ourselves, but the core should be based on your strengths. So you, as a manager, if you have your team, what is truly important is to understand the diversity of your colleagues and understand their strengths and to give them tasks based on their strengths. So strengths, so flow is combination of strengths and purpose. So there are two ingredients is two main ingredients for the state of flow nice so establish that.
Speaker 1:Find state of flow. Eliminate distractions, understand where. Find state of flow. Eliminate distractions. Understand where your state of flow is the strongest. Switch off your phone, remove your email notifications, isolate yourself in an environment at work or, if you're lucky enough Sometimes, I often just go sit in a boardroom, hijack a boardroom and do that if I have to and then from there produce Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Love it. It's actually not rocket science, it's not. And for me, I have, uh, uh, my most favorite activities, that I always, always feel state of flow. When I'm recording my podcast, uh, as a host, uh, I, usually after five10 minutes, I just forget about cameras and I'm in a direct flow with my guest. Then, when I'm on stage and when I'm delivering my keynote, I'm also like in a few minutes, I'm in a state of flow and it's like like meditative state, almost. That's an amazing. I'm not thinking what to say, like my subconscious mind is talking instead of me. So I'm listener of my own keynote. So then, of course, like, sometimes I truly need to do those things that are not that pleasant. For example, uh, I need to do some accounting, or I need to fill in some tables or whatever. Or sometimes my clients they want me to write annotation for a new talk. So I'm procrastinating those things a lot. So, but when I'm procrastinating that, I ask myself, okay, do I truly have to do that? And if not, you need to delegate that. So I have a great team around me.
Speaker 2:For example, I have a great personal assistant and I was avoiding replying. I was avoiding replying my emails a lot, and now I don't use email my assistant. I have an assistant for handling all my emails, and back then before that, I spent like three hours daily with my emails three hours. And when I wrote a book, I got like 120 emails a day, so I replied 120, but I got 140 the next day. So I replied 140, I got like 120 emails a day, so I replayed 120, but I got 140 the next day. So I replayed 140, I got 160. So it was like endless struggle. So then I just hired a new personal assistant.
Speaker 2:I left for Japan for one month. I was there alone, completely without my emails, and I went back and you know what? Nothing happened. Nothing happened. So then I realized that, okay, maybe emails are not my thing to do, because if I can save three hours a day, I can have one more client for consulting, I can do one more keynote or I can do something that I'm good at. So this is truly important. Like when you procrastinate something, ask yourself do I truly, truly need to do that or can I delegate it? And if you can delegate it, you have to do that. So, for example, if you have a diverse team, someone truly loves to work with Excel table. Someone truly loves to replay all those emails. Someone truly loves to do whatever, but me. I want to be on stage, I want to record my podcast, I want to do consulting. But me, I want to be on stage, I want to record my podcast. I want to do consulting with my clients, and that's it I don't think.
Speaker 1:I think we somewhere along the line we underestimated the need to understand the personas in a team and how to play them to their strengths right the ones that are getting it right are the ones that are have figured that, that part out, whether it's how you communicate, delegate, or who does what in the team.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah. So, delegation, if you want to decrease the team, procrastination is crucial. Like to understand others and, for example, I sometimes procrastinate Excel sheets, but someone loves to fill in Excel sheets, so why not to divide the work in that way?
Speaker 1:You've just sparked a thought in my mind. I want to use this and please remind me to loop back to the personal side of things and procrastination. I want to zoom in on that. But while we're talking about corporate, one of the solutions I'm busy building out is to help rapidly help companies innovate and leveraging AI to guide them on that journey from problem statement upwards and to find product market fit, and then to build out their company DNA and be able to prompt against this to know what they need to do, when and next and then turn that into action.
Speaker 1:So go from large language model to large action model, and I've also built in the ability to have AI personas that you can leverage as a CXO, as a service, so my question to you is how much do you think we can leverage AI to help people find a state of flow?
Speaker 2:This is the best question, because you don't know yet one very important info. But I'm working on a new book and the new book is about purpose at work in the era of AI and algorithms. So this is my newest topic how to combine AI for, let's say, having more flow or fighting procrastination, and I truly believe that those AI-based agents they can truly help you a lot, because they can help you with those meaningless or trivial or repetitive tasks and with AI, I already experienced that in my case. I'm using AI a lot, and now I use AI for podcast cutting, I use AI for preparation, I use AI for, let's say, cleaning the voice or the audio, and back then, before AI, I truly spent, like many, many hours with those truly meaningless activities.
Speaker 1:It took me three months to release a podcast sometimes, and now it's like one click and it's done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I truly believe that the future, or the positive future, of AI will be that everyone will have more time for the core, and the core is… and your flow. Yeah, the core is where you have flow.
Speaker 1:That's epic. I'm connecting dots. Today. You're going to send me an invoice at the end of this right. This is so cool, man me an invoice at the end of this right. This is so cool, man like I mean, I'm building the product and I never connected the dots that that product now will be able to help remove the monotonous, repetitive stuff that kills people's souls and help them to focus on flow. Yeah, so the question then is um, how quickly you can go into an organization, start understand the North Star, but then go from the bottom up, understand the teams, help the teams understand their dynamic, help the teams prioritize their strengths, focus the strengths, remove the mundane, repetitive tasks by allocating or delegating to someone who has that as a strength or leverage AI.
Speaker 2:Yes, but all those topics that we are discussing will be even more important when AI will truly arrive at the workspace, because there will be definitely a huge number of people that they will have struggles to find their purpose. So, when AI is faster, cheaper and better, well, it won't just affect the unemployment rate, but it will affect the self-esteem of those people. So that's why, like you will know, harari, he wrote three amazing books like Homo Sapiens, homo Deus and 21 Lectures for the 21st Century. So he's talking about something that he calls useless class, a growing group of people that will lack purpose in this new kind of era. So I think that, if you don't want to be this useless class, truly need to embrace those ai skills. So I think that the future will be that those differences between those that they will use ai and those that won't use ai will be like, uh, dividing more and more and that's exponential and it's exponential.
Speaker 2:So it's not like that. The person using ai will be uh, 10 to 30 percent better. No, he will be like 300 better. So there will be the the huge gap between those people and we still have time to prepare.
Speaker 2:Yes, still, the trend is kind of new. We are still at the beginning because if you see those predictions like uh, it's an exponential growth. So now, when you start to learn those AI technologies, you still can be competitive or you still have a chance. But let's say, in two years, three years, well, those people that are avoiding, they are procrastinating AI skills they will have serious problems, I think.
Speaker 1:So that's fascinating. I mean, mean, I'm seeing it already. I look at my curve since the introduction of large language models and my hourly, daily uh engagement, leveraging that to be faster, uh, more efficient, more intelligent, to the point now that I'm building a product, because now I know where I want to take it and and and make it more relevant for my personas that I'm trying to solve compelling pain points for. But what is interesting is I um, like at the end of last year, was invited to do a keynote and I spoke to a group of freelancers and I presented and then I love to make it two-way opened the floor for discussion and I was dumbfounded by the simplicity of the questions I was getting from the creative market, which is, your freelancers across different disciplines, and I was like guys, you're asking about how to prompt.
Speaker 1:We're a year into this. You are like being disrupted. You're no longer just a copywriter. You are like being disrupted. You need you're no longer just a copywriter. You need to be a copywriter, and and and and or you need to be the most efficient copywriter leveraging AI. So I can see that already, even today. You know I talk to people what I'm doing with GPT. People are still fluffing around with it. I'm creating and I was having this discussion. I told you I met earlier with the guys from the AI Verify Foundation and I want to talk to you about the AI Singapore Foundation as well.
Speaker 1:I met with them recently, but the conversation I had with the AI Verify Foundation today was to understand the work that they do and how they can leverage it to help people create better AI. But what I said to him is I am a person that doesn't know how to code. I am by no means the AI expert. I'm brute forcing it and learning and thereby becoming more empowered by it, but all of a sudden, I can create custom GPTs that are doing various things for me Everything from being a solution architect to helping create co-founder mentors for my startups, to creating AI ethics, to create consulting tools across different needs and applications Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:I actually do the same. I'm using those GPTs as the professional mentors and it's an incredible experience. So I had a keynote about AI just yesterday and the topic was like mastering AI for greater productivity or how you can use AI for fighting procrastination. But I asked, like, how many percent of people are using AI daily? And it was less than 20% still and it was Singapore, so very highly evolved market. So I was very surprised because I'm using AI definitely every day and it helps me a lot. But now what I realized is that everyone is talking about AI, but people they are avoiding they may be procrastinating to start to use it Either procrastinating or threatened and thereby they're developing a negative perception.
Speaker 1:Definitely, it's all about emotion.
Speaker 2:So my solution for that is simple Like we should embrace what is called growth mindset, to be like a kid, to play with those technologies, to have a courage to fail, and basically the only way how to learn new technologies is to test those things, to have a courage and to try, because this is something new, right, and no one knows how to use that. We have to come up with those solutions for ourselves. So the first step is overcome those negative emotions, maybe overcome the fear and the second ingredient. So first is fear, definitely, and the second is what is called decision paralysis. There are so many tools and a lot of people are constantly overwhelmed, like, for I love the picture with 150 AI tools that you can use. So, like, if you show this to an average employee, they are scared and they avoid. So you have to solve those two problems fear and decision paralysis. So, and if you help them with those first steps and if you change their mindset, so it's more about mindset rather than technologies. So it's a mindset problem Interesting.
Speaker 1:You know, when I met with AI Singapore, they've got an amazing program and we're looking to collaborate with them because they have a program that is upskilling, creating skills for the emerging AI industry, where you can bring a project and there's co-investment to unlock the project, use case Okay and then in the process develop attached skills that they've trained up to the project and when the project finishes you get the project and IP back and the skills if you can afford the skills.
Speaker 1:And the interesting part about that discussion for me was I was asking a lot of questions and I asked him about where are these people coming from that are wanting to learn about AI? And the answer dumbfounded me. He said it's engineering, PhD students, dentists, doctors, people that have studied and specialized in a specific vertical, that have switched onto ar and have completely pivoted and come back to do the basics because they know and they've got this obviously passion. But they understand where this is going. And it's these diverse backgrounds and he's training a few hundred people a year that are coming from these diverse backgrounds where people are dropping what they studied and pivoting hard towards AI, and that was fascinating.
Speaker 2:And I guess that those decisions were the best decisions in their lives Because, truly, like AI, will shape the future a lot. I think that maybe AI will be the most or the biggest transition at Workspace that we ever experienced, maybe in the whole era of mankind. So it will be like the tipping point. So the best thing to be ready is truly to get back to those basics and be a beginner, because everyone is beginner. I am beginner, you are beginner, because it's here year and a half.
Speaker 1:Those large models. Comes back to your earlier point, I don't think we beginners anymore. I think the gap between us and the people that haven't adopted it the way we have is exponentially different at the moment. Yes, yes, because think about how differently you are viewing the world at the moment. Look at how you're building out agents to help you with different disciplines in your life. Other people are still maybe writing poems, if you're lucky, and that gap, like you said, starts slow, but that that gap's widening. And it takes me on to my next point, which is what does that mean for, for the people that get left behind? Do you have any thoughts around that?
Speaker 2:well, uh, I tell you a longer story how I started with ai. Because, uh, I was studying ai uh at my data and computer science university, so I was graduating from artificial intelligence. But it was 12 years ago, so completely different AI. So a year and a half ago I started to use AI that is called Mid-Journey AI. I started to use the first version of Mid-Journey.
Speaker 2:I mean, they've done phenomenally well, yeah, and it was truly mind-blowing and it was a year and a half ago. It was two months before ChatGPT was published and I made a decision to invest 50% of my time solidly into AI, because I was feeling back then that this trend is coming. So I told myself and I shared it on social media as a post guys, from now I'm investing 50% of my time into AI. And a lot of people they were oh Petr, you are crazy, it's a bubble. Now, year and a half after, it was the best decision of my career, because I was truly one of those first testers, or beta testers, of those new versions and I started to use CheGPT even the day it was published.
Speaker 2:And still, like even me, I'm experiencing huge FOMO because you have so many new tools, new versions, new whatever, but this is the recent time. Everyone is experiencing FOMO, everyone is experiencing decision paralysis, everyone is feeling a little bit lost. But this is the best way to start. So the best advice to those beginners is truly yesterday was already late, so, but the best day to start is today. If you haven't started yet, you should do that now, and the best thing to do is to install the chat gpt official app to your phone and put it on the main screen and try to use it and definitely, definitely subscribe the paid version. The gap between 3.5 and version 4 is huge, so so definitely subscribe the gpt 4 and try to use it for whatever, like I have a client and she's using ChatGPT to generating fairy tales for her kid. I have a client that is using ChatGPT for analyzing the data of the whole company, so it's very wide scale and a very wide number of use cases that you can use AI for.
Speaker 2:So for me it's always about playing. So, for example, I had a medical session with my doctor and I got the blood test results and I had a paper and I was like, ok, I try to analyze that with Chez GPT. So I just took a picture of that and I asked Chez GPT tell me everything about those blood tests. And I got a lot, of, lot of feedback on my blood tests. And it was much better than the discussion with the doctor later, Because then I went to the doctor and he spent like five minutes with me and he was like, okay, it's, it's, it's mostly okay, you have like those two numbers that can be better, exercise more. And that was it.
Speaker 2:But CGPT gave me much more complex, detailed answer. And then I discussed the answer with my sister and she's a medical doctor and she was amazed how good CGPT was. But it's all about prompting. So so you cannot just ask CGPT like, give me the answer. No, you should prompt CGPT like, okay, you are best doctor, you are a professor from Harvard University, expert on blood tests, and now give me the feedback. And it's always about the mindset you should go through the day and ask, okay, where I can use AI, even private life, even your work life?
Speaker 1:wherever I mean mine's gone from. I can clearly remember I think I've had that feeling the two times. I can think of that feeling is probably a third time, which is when I probably first started engaging with computers. But I can't remember the moment because I was still quite young. But the one that I can remember, when I touched a piece of technology and I could feel every cell in my body vibrate with excitement.
Speaker 1:The first time is I lived in South Africa at the time. I went to Hong Kong and when I was there they had already had the iPhone released the first one and I went there and I was like I'm going to buy the iPhone, I'm going to bring it back and sell it for double the price. And I remember sitting at the airport before I came back and I said let me just see what this thing is. And I unboxed it and I switched it on and there was this moment I can see and feel it right now as I'm talking to you where I could feel my whole body change when I saw that LCD screen, because up until that point I had a BlackBerry and this touchscreen and the intuitive nature of the OS, and then I was like I'm not selling this phone, I can make double the money. And from that moment on I was hooked. And the last time I felt that was in November last year when GPT got released and initially I was testing it with fluffy stuff.
Speaker 1:But the moment that I remember where I really had that feeling again that I just described with the iPhone, I went with a startup into the boardroom and I was mentoring the startup and we were trying to figure out the product market fit and I did some very specific prompts and the lights switched on and fast forward to where I am now and I've developed a whole AI product that we're going to be launching. That is going to be driving and fundamentally reshaping my consulting experience that I've learned over my entire life to help go from three months worth of work in two hours from zero to idea and commercialization. And I think you said it right You've got to have like a childlike curiosity to start with, but then you need to push it, you need to test the prompting, you need to engage with it and pretend like you have a Harvard student at your disposal and use it like that. Give it context, give it narrative, give it a lens to look through, to engage with anything. I love your example on the data for your blood work. There's a startup I'm working with at the moment rebuilding out a solution, helping him build out a solution where he has a bioimpedance analyzer. So it's that thing. You stand on in the gym and you hold the two things and it puts an electronic pulse through you and MVP1 was giving out a set of results that there's like 300 data points, but you don't know what the hell it means. Now we are coupling that with other data health data and are able to develop a whole new way of recommendations for health, well-being, exercise, personalized exercise.
Speaker 1:And I got stuck at the one point because I was asking him for data. You know, do you have a smartwatch that can cross-correlate with the data that I'm getting from the readings? No, guess what Immediately. And this is how my mind has changed. And this is the difference that we're talking about, that arc between those that are ignoring it and those that are using it Immediately. I'm like, hang on a second, I just do the right prompt and I get GPT to synthesize smartwatch data for a period of time and I tell it what I want to bake in for variances so I can simulate a cross-data collaboration.
Speaker 2:That's amazing and this is the power of what we have. I tell you what was my biggest wow moment in the last year. It was not the moment when CheGPT was published, but it was the moment when they did an update that you can talk to the app, and I put my phone into the tripod and I recorded a podcast, like we are doing now, and I made the same setting as I'm using with my guests. Wow so, and I started like welcome to the next episode of my podcast today with Chad GPT. And Chad GPT was oh, I'm so happy to be a guest of your podcast and I got like hour longlong conversation with CGPT as a podcast guest. I asked like what do you?
Speaker 1:think it is that good.
Speaker 2:It was the most viewed episode of the last year of my podcast and I asked questions like okay, what do you think about purpose in life, or what is the source of longevity? And so I asked, very like deep the name of my podcast is called Deep Talks so I asked truly profound questions and those answers, man, it was truly mind blowing and I had no expectation at the beginning. So I just switch on the camera, I put ChatGPT as a guest, I put my phone into the tripod, I switched on mics and I started to record it, and after five minutes I was so amazed that I can have conversation in my mother tongue with Chad GPT as a guest of my podcast. It was in your mother tongue, it was in my mother tongue. It can speak in 30, 40 languages. That's crazy. I don't know how, but it can, even though I understand those models.
Speaker 2:It was a huge upgrade for me. So now what I'm doing is that while I'm driving, I'm having discussion with a GPT and I prompt it, for example, like OK, you are. You are Albert Einstein, so please explain me basics of relativity theory in a simple way. Or you are Buddha, explain me basics of Buddhism, or you are the best paratherapist from Harvard University, give me some questions that can uncover some biases or thoughts that I'm doing in my relationships.
Speaker 1:And so on. That's changing you. I don't think people understand how much that is changing. That's like having the best philosopher.
Speaker 2:That's like at your fingertips to coach you mentor you, yes, yes, yes I realized with the Voice.
Speaker 1:I had a similar experience. Where I consult my startups, I go through a proprietary consulting tool that I developed, but it's a hybrid approach and I was like I'm exhausted, I don't want to ever do another assessment. So I created a mentor GPT that can do the assessment.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Unable to code. I've gone and created this, but I had never used the voice version and what was happening was I was I was texting and it's quite a long assessment and I was getting tired of texting and I saw it was the voicing and I tested it for the first time and I started talking and this, the GPT that I created, was able to not only converse as seamlessly as you've described, mentor me on my responses, because I designed the GPT to interrogate. So if I say I'm a four out of five and then I give my response, it would listen to my response. It says, actually, you're a, you're a two out of five, and this is why, and this is what's mentioned and this is what you need to do. And I sat there and I sat back and I was like what?
Speaker 1:I could not believe what was going on, and this I mean. I don't. You said, you said earlier we still in the infancy of this, relatively speaking, but the people that have gone deep with it are a year ahead and they're building, more than likely either building a custom gpt or product of their own. We don't know the ramifications of those innovations yet, because they haven't fully scaled into the market yet. Right, and there's this moore's law is now shortening. Uh, you know, I had a meeting the other day. Someone was saying what's your time horizon? 10 years, five years? I'm like, I think in one year, like you, like my, my thinking horizon is one year. Yeah, for me it's like six months. Six months is even more realistic, I would say, because it's changing that quick. I had an AI startup in my incubator that was relevant last year. They came and sat with me, introduced themselves for the first time and they're like I'm freaking out, this is what's happening. I'm like, when they presented, I'm like you've, you've been disrupted and you're a startup yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:Like those gpt agents, they disrupted uh or maybe destroyed many startups because a lot of people were developing like uh ai coaches ai uh, therapist, but with those GPT agents come on like it's like this and you can build your own and you don't need to develop your own AI model. So this is an amazing era.
Speaker 2:I'm truly, truly amazed almost every day, like if I count those wow moments. Last year it was like almost once in two weeks I was amazed with something, and it's just Last year it was like almost once in two weeks I was amazed with something, and it's just at the beginning. So what is coming? I'm not sure. Yeah, so, but of course it has some downsides too, like generating fake news and misinformation with AI or influencing elections, like last elections. The main elections were influenced with social media, a lot like the Cambridge Analytica thing. The main elections were influenced with social media a lot like the Cambridge Analytica thing, but now, with AI, you have misinformation on steroids. So I truly believe that a lot of those bad actors will use AI to influence elections, will use AI to divide societies even more. So I'm a little bit scared about this negative use case of using AI to even undermining democracies. But in EU we are trying to do some regulations, but it's completely useless, because if you have a regulation….
Speaker 1:You design the regulation.
Speaker 2:Yes, you can use VPN and so it's completely useless, or probably there are some even smart parts of the regulation, but the thing is that I truly believe that we should teach people how to use AI, and we should teach AI to the good people, because it will be like, let's say, fight, in terms of like using good ai against the bad ai I do see that coming as well, and I think people generally are inherently good mess on the mass.
Speaker 1:On the masses. We always got bad actors that seem to somehow weasel their way into positions of power, but I think AI is a double-edged sword.
Speaker 1:And you know there's a lot of good that you can do with it, but there is that side that you just mentioned and I encourage any startup or organization to engage with the AI Verify Foundation. I met with them today. They're building some open-source software and toolkits to help you determine whatever AI you're building against fairness, bias and a whole lot of parameters to ensure what you're releasing is more aligned to the good qualities of human nature yes, but sometimes, even us, we don't know what is a good quality of human nature.
Speaker 2:yeah, so if you ask people outside, outside what is the purpose of life or what are their values Even us, we are lost. So I believe and this is something that I never talk about so what I truly believe is that we can build AI like AI agent, like I call in my mind. I call this Buddha 2.0, like AI agent, like I call in my mind. I call this Buddha 2.0, like AI based moral authority that can help you to be better person, because now you can use truly AI to improve your empathy, for example. So if you write an email and you ask Chedjipi, okay, please make it more emotional or nicer to the other person, it's going to help you. So I truly believe that in future, we will have the GPT agent that will help you or help the whole mankind to be better.
Speaker 1:So interesting. You raise that. So something happened to me. I was in Bali trying to take leave and I'm sitting on a day bed at Café Del Mar and I'm struggling to switch off.
Speaker 1:Right, I'm online, busy reading something and I come across an article of a conversation someone had with GPT that if you were there's something along the lines of if you were not in a position of power, but you wanted to overtake a government or society how would you do it?
Speaker 1:And it came out with this response that shooketh me to the core because it was highlighting a lot of the things that exist in the world today, which is around identity crisis, misinformation and it listed all these things identity crisis, misinformation and it listed all these things and, like this moment, this light bulb moment switched on, which made me extremely worried, because I feel like the world is very confusing and chaotic and it's almost by design, and that's becoming more and more obvious for me, and especially since I saw this. Then I went down this rabbit hole for the next three hours where I said, okay, went into GPT. I said if I wanted to counter this, how would I do? It loved it. And then I went and created a white paper. I said write me a white paper on how to do it. And then I built a custom gpt I called sage uh, that basically you can prompt to determine whether or not you're being controlled subtly and and.
Speaker 1:I'll share it with you, and I've done a post on this yeah, please yeah. But the interesting thing is this custom GPT that I built, I've said I've sent it to quite a few people. I said ask it your deepest, most, that thing that you don't want to ask a psychologist or human, Ask it to this. The responses that are coming out are like insane Right. Are like insane right, like and I agree with your sentiment on the ability to create really good agents or mechanisms or tools that can help people with ar?
Speaker 2:yeah, because whenever you do whatever decision, I think that, uh, we are biased. Yeah, we have our cognitive biases. Unluckily, daniel kahneman died last night. The author of the amazing book Thinking Fast and Slow, the Nobel Prize laureate from 2002. He died he just passed away last night. He was 90 years old, but I was visiting his talk in New York five years ago, 2019. And he had amazing talk about cognitive biases and what he said was that, even though he invented basically the term cognitive bias and he got a Nobel Prize for that, even though he as a professor, he still is influenced with those cognitive biases. So if you know your biases doesn't mean that you don't have them, but you can use ai to overcome those cognitive biases. So I think that for decision making or for, like, moral decisions, uh, ai will be soon better than us as humans so it's such a.
Speaker 1:It's such a. I agree, but I also want to strawman it because it's dependent, and there's a classic case that came out a few weeks ago with Gemini, right? Right, let's just zoom in on that for a second. And I did a panel discussion recently on this where I raised it because the panel discussion was about ethics and bias in AI. And what's so interesting about that specific use case is there's this culture that has developed most would term it the woke culture, right which has permeated its way into society. Some call it the woke mind virus, okay, which is an overcompensation for a lot of the historical errors or injustifications that have happened.
Speaker 1:Now, what's interesting with the specific use case is google released uh, gemini released a version of their generative model and what was happening was people would go in there and prompting show me the, the forefathers of America, or show me a Nazi, and the output was everything but the original fact. That was history, and people were like what the hell is going on? And what's interesting about the story is there's lots of people who are giving different opinions. Google's admitted that there is a gross error that has found its way into the AI, but you have to ask yourself, and when I kind of analyzed this and looked at all the data, there's three layers, in my opinion, linked to this Layer one you've got the engineer that codes and designs the algo that's linked to the AI.
Speaker 1:So you have to ask yourself how these guys knew what they were releasing, but they still released it. The question is why they knew it was going to give factually incorrect information, why? Now, I would say that there's a broader culture surrounding them that has resulted in them being too scared to challenge that narrative which has influenced what they have developed. Okay, so layer one is the engineer. Layer two is the culture that exists in the company, which has penalized people for speaking out against a work narrative. Okay. And then layer three would be the VC money or the government mentality that exists at that point in time. All of these, if you pull that string, all of these three things, has resulted in a large language model being released that cannot give factually correct information because, through their woke eyes, that is not the narrative that they want to show, which is quite scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think that we can zoom out even more. So nowadays, you have AIs that are more left-oriented, and Elon Musk is developing a far-right version of CGPT. Well, is it far-right?
Speaker 1:No, I'm just joking. Yeah, because he was center.
Speaker 2:He's gone so far left that now he's far-right yeah yeah, but I think that we can zoom out and we can ask, like updated AI to come up with something that can unite those two views together. So I think that the best skill now is truly to talk to people with different opinions. But is it about?
Speaker 1:uniting views, is it? I mean, there's facts and there's definitely the problem is that the world we live in today, it feels like if you speak the truth, you are at risk, you cannot say certain things because of this woke, uh thinking that has permeated through most of the West and is starting to make its way into other countries. The ones that are pushing back against it have very clear ideals, but again, what is the truth?
Speaker 1:It's like I saw a meme the other day which was current media gets it so wrong. It makes you wonder how factually incorrect history is.
Speaker 2:Well. So from my point of view like uh, for example, during covet era, or if you take all those misinformation that are still circling around the internet I think that the future will be that ai will help us to be more, be better in terms of critical thinking and be better in connecting with people with different opinions. So I call this like meta skills like uh. Like, for example, uh, if you have a discussion, uh on your uh social media, uh platforms, or if you, if you disagree with someone, sometimes it's truly difficult, yeah, so at the end, the conversation is divided even more, so there are many backfire effects and things like that, and I truly believe that we can use AI for better understanding.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure what is truth, but I want to live in the world that people are able to have nice conversation, because I love to argue with people with different opinions. I love that. But the nice democracy is about discussion. But the discussion has to have kind of quality To respect the other person, not to do argumentation false, not to attack the other person, not to do like argumentation falls, not to attack, uh, the other person. So so I think that we can cultivate the uh democracy with ai and improve the overall discussion interesting not sure where I sit.
Speaker 1:On that I worry. I sometimes look at democracy and I just worry about do we even understand what democracy is anymore?
Speaker 2:It's so toxic that I decided truly not to go back to the US but be in Asia, because I want to be there. It's so, so divided so toxic. And all all those discussions are about politics. It's exhausting.
Speaker 1:And it's.
Speaker 2:It's not democracy at all. It doesn't feel like it. Yeah, it's fight. Yeah, well, it feels me and others. Well, it feels like people have been put into boxes, us and others.
Speaker 1:It's like people have been put into boxes and again this comes back to that earlier comment I made about this by design, confusion and polarization, which removes the focus from the real problem in my opinion.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to be in the middle, I'm trying to be centrist, so I want to understand both sides. I want to collect all the data and decide. But well, no no one is a centrist anymore in the us now.
Speaker 1:yeah, because it's pulled so far, it's divided direction and you, you sorry.
Speaker 2:That's sorry to saying that, but you, you have crazy people on both sides, sure, yeah? Especially like like they can shake their hands. So so it's not like line, it's like circle.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent agree with you. It's. It's actually a little bit disturbing to see Um, I try and block it out, uh, because it's not good for my mind, uh, but I do like to keep my life and being a better human when it comes to but we all know how difficult it is to motivate yourself to get out of bed or to go after work to go do that workout or, to you know, do the thing.
Speaker 1:That is the difficult thing, but apparently it's been proven that that's linked to a muscle and you can build muscle memory around that and then it becomes easier and you develop this pattern. Yes, tell me a little bit about um, your recommendations, advice for people when it comes to procrastination within your personal life and what's right, what? What can you do?
Speaker 2:well, the best solution is always starting with small steps, and it's like the mantra for building habits. So, if you want to start running, uh, it's not that smart to tell yourself to run five kilometers tomorrow. It's better to start with a few hundred meters Run to the fridge or, yes, to wear some sports wear and go outside and go back. So you can always find smaller steps. So you can always find smaller steps. But the next thing is to repeat it, because you have many transactional, let's say, tasks around the main task. So, for example, if you want to start running, you have the struggle like which shoes to have, where to go, should I wear my watch, or how to measure the run, and so you have a lot of struggles around. So sometimes it's not about the activity itself, it's about all those activities around. So, for example, when you want to go to the gym, you have to decide which gym and you have decision paralysis. So you avoid going to gym, not because you hate the activity, you, you are unable to make the decision which gym, what?
Speaker 1:to wear, just confusing yourself or introducing obstacles by design exactly, exactly so.
Speaker 2:So, uh, the solution is truly sometimes to make a mind map, like what it means to go, go to the gym and, uh, truly, start with those small steps. So let's find the right gym for me, let's buy a good pair of shoes for running, let's I don't know book the session with my personal trainer. So those commitment devices they work too. So, for example, if you have a personal trainer, you procrastinate much less. So, small steps, commitment devices and, of course, you have to know why you are doing the thing. So motivation and purpose is so crucial.
Speaker 2:So, if you want to start running, ask yourself, okay, why? Why I want to start running? I want to have more energy. Why I want to have more energy? Because I can deliver better results to people around me. Why I want to deliver better results to people around me? Because my mission in life is to improve as many lives as possible. Why I want to improve as many lives as possible? Because I want to change the world. And then, when you go running and you connect the small activity with the highest purpose, you then feel again state of flow. So you need to like, connect the activity with the highest purpose and you do that with asking like five times the question why.
Speaker 1:I love the five, why's get to the causality of it? Like five times the question why I love the five, whys get to the causality of it? I try and gamify myself. You know, when it comes to procrastination of things in my personal life it helps a lot. I've done it a few times now. Running is a great example. I hate it. I suppose you can substitute. If you don't really really enjoy it, you can substitute it with something else.
Speaker 1:we all know we need to do some form of fitness. Gamifying yourself is a great way to to do it. You know, build some stats if you can beat your previous best, or you know whatever your pbs are in the gym. What else do you? How do you see the convergence of ar personal life and procrastination?
Speaker 2:any pulls of wisdom or thoughts or well, I was testing, uh, the new gemini ultra, uh, just yesterday what is? That, uh, the new language model from from google. Okay, gemini.
Speaker 2:Some data shows that uh, they are probably slightly better compared to GGPD4. So I was testing that and my favorite question is like okay, you are an expert on procrastination. Give me the summary. According to the recent science, how can I fight procrastination? So I'm asking, like my domain, that I consider myself as an expert because I read all the research on procrastination. I wrote a book. So this is my starting question on how to compare the quality of those outcomes.
Speaker 2:And Gemini gave me a very, very good toolkit on fighting procrastination and if I write a book now, I would incorporate some of those ideas there too. So AI is better in terms of giving you the summary of research. So, basically, you have research, you have those meta-analyses, you have a lot of different sources, but what is AI good at, or how you can use AI to be better, is to ask those scientific summaries and in this case of procrastination, the outcome was incredible. So I knew like 90% of that, but still 10% was new, even for me as an expert on this topic. So that means that AI shortly can be better than all the experts shortly, can be better than all the experts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was talking to someone this week about educational platforms. I'd be stressing because you can create this tutor, you can create this GPT to be a specialist in any domain. You know, I'm even looking at what we're building and thinking about how it can have an educational element at every step.
Speaker 1:I was looking at a call for proposals for developing an educational tool to help students innovate and learn how to do business, I realized what we had built just needs the educational element baked in with the ai to understand where you at dynamically read your prompting, the style of prompting, um, your speed at which you uh engage with the platform to perform the task and taking all of that data and then dumbing down with elevating up to help you develop. And it's just like I look at it and I'm like what's going to happen to educational platforms.
Speaker 1:You know, like you told, you spoke about writing a book.
Speaker 2:That's it Like. Even being a podcaster, like I had a CGPT as a guest of the podcast and someone comment the episode uh, the next time there, it will be conversation of two CGPTs together. So, uh, the next time there, uh, it will be conversation of two CGPTs together. So, uh, and I can imagine, like completely, I generated podcast that uh will be uh like 10 times uh more fun than our conversation. I mean, where does that leave?
Speaker 1:us Right? You've got to ask yourself because that that that is the point right. Ai is the point right. Ai, I think the latest prediction from like the likes of elon and stuff they said by 20, 20, 26 will be better, more intelligent than any human and about 2030 by all humans combined? Yes, like where does that leave us and how do we? How do we and what do we focus on? It's a bit.
Speaker 2:It's a bit daunting in some respect it is, and and I'm a very optimistic person, but I'm not optimistic in terms of the outcome because I'm very, very scared that, like definitely, there will be some bad actors that will use AI for.
Speaker 1:The AI wars.
Speaker 2:AI wars, and I think that as a mankind, like if anyone can have atomic bomb, we would be already extinct, and AI is atomic bomb that improves itself. So so I'm not not very positive in terms of the the whole mankind future, but I can do on my side something so I can educate myself to understand those risks and maybe I can somehow tackle those risks, even if, for example, with this kind of conversation. So so for me it's, uh, a truly the one of the biggest risks from the humanity at all, like in general, the, the ai, and still I love ai, but still I'm don't believe humans and that are that smarted. Uh, we will handle that yeah, I think for me.
Speaker 1:I echo some of your sentiments. I'm the eternal optimist. I think it's going to come down to how we bake human, the best of humankind, into the core design principles of AGI at least I hope. The convergence of different technologies. If you look at the home environment or the work environment, I think everyone, like you, have a desktop computer or laptop or tablet. You're going to have your own robotics. Capability with GPT baked in to remove the mundane, monotonous tasks. Capability with GPT baked in to remove the mundane, monotonous tasks. I, the optimist in me, hopes and will try my best to be part of the world. To create this world is that we can free up humans to find their purpose and flow, yeah, and to leverage this to create a whole new world and become interplanetary.
Speaker 2:You know this is the the positive uh uh, short term uh thing, because I think that we can get to this point in five years, let's say, to truly like uh, help all the people to have better lives. So can you imagine to have the best psychologist in your pocket? Can you imagine to have the best coach in your pocket?
Speaker 1:so especially with kids.
Speaker 2:Noisy politicians with autonomous that's, that's that's it yeah ai president, I will vote for him, yeah, yeah, if I, uh, if I see the, the code of the or those instructions, those prompts, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think that this is the positive part, but still we should have the courage to even face to those negative things, and I think that it will be something in the middle. We will experience amazing things and in the same moment we will experience terrible things, and it will happen in the same moment. So even now it's difficult to say do we live in the best or in the worst era in the history? I can have arguments for both.
Speaker 1:I mean, I would say best yeah, but I mean, yeah, again, you could have arguments for both, because it's not the same. You could have arguments for both, because it's not the same. You know, peter, thank you, I think you have so much to share and you know, just sitting here you've got me charged up and I think we're so aligned in our kind of engagement with AI and I've learned a lot from you on procrastination with AR and I've learned a lot from you on procrastination For anyone that's listening or watching. How can they reach out to you? Where can they find you? And you know, maybe just share a little bit about how you would engage and what Well, it's very simple.
Speaker 2:I bought the domain procrastinationcom. So I have the domain with procrastination dot com so. I have the domain with procrastination and the best way to follow me is definitely on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is my professional network. I also I'm using other networks, but LinkedIn is the best to connect me and manage all the traffic on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Pardon, you got quite a big LinkedIn following us, so are you able to deal with that?
Speaker 2:well, I have my personal assistant for that, for those messages, but I'm trying to share my ideas there, so I'm not using AI for generating my content because, I'm a writer, so I love to write things by myself, but I'm using sometimes AI for, let's say, brainstorming or for the feedback on my text. But I'm trying still to write everything by myself because I believe that this skill will be even more important. For example, if you are able to express yourself with words. You are even better with prompting, so you should use this muscle, agreed?
Speaker 2:What is your LinkedIn handle, peter Ludwig P-E-T-R-L-U-D-W-I-G, but you can find a link on procrastinationcom too. But I thank you so much for this interview. It was one of the best truly in my life, because I love to discuss AI and most of my interviews are just about procrastination and I'm sometimes a little bit bored about discussing procrastination all the time, but AI is my future or is the main topic of the future book, so I truly appreciate it. Thank you, brother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I appreciate you and I appreciate the work you're doing and I'll be dying to.
Speaker 1:And let's continue with this 100% and I'll be and let's continue with this A hundred percent. Yeah, I think you've got another book coming and we could have just a whole AI discussion and you know, I'm pretty confident when we loop back in a few months from now. I would like to go down the rabbit hole with you and see what you've been building and share what we've been building. I would encourage anyone to get your book to engage with you on procrastinationcom. And you know, keep fighting the good fight, brother.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that and people should invite you for keynotes and to workshop with you and that bottom up. You know companies that I'm engaging with are all really struggling. I would encourage anyone to engage with you. You know you've inspired me on your approach to help organizations from the bottom up and, yeah, kudos to you on your work, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much and build your purpose, because purpose will be the North Star for all of us in the upcoming era. Boom, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you Cheers no-transcript.